Project Management 2.0 – What’s Wrong With 1.0?
Bay Area, Business, SaaS, Social Networking August 28th, 2008
Let me quickly state that I don’t really know what the consensus definition of PM 2.0 is, but I do have a feeling based on my very 1.0-style experience.
In the 90’s I worked on a number of fairly large scale SAP Projects in a variety of roles, including Project Manager, and supervisor of several other projects. The standard tool was Microsoft Project. It was used for:
- Planning a Project (initial Scoping)
- Selling it
- Periodic reporting to Steering Committee during the actual projects
What’s missing from the above?  Well, how about using it to help the actual daily work of project team members?
Project team members did not even have access to MS Project, it only existed in a few copies on the PM and Team Lead’s computers. Information-flow was one-way: feed the beast to be able to occasionally print charts that look impressive (scary) enough that Steering Committee members won’t question it.
Ok, I am admittedly sarcastic, but the point is:Â PM 1.0 was all about planning, reporting and it served Management but did not help actual Project Execution.
My expectation of PM 2.0 would be that it helps all team members involved who can share information, collaborate on it and actually get clues from the system on where they are, where they should be, what their next step is, instead of just feeding the beast.
Is this the real promise of Project Management 2.0?  I hope to find out from an excellent set of panelists that I have the honor of moderating at the Office 2.0 Conference next week:
- Andrew Filev (Wrike)
- Bruce Henry (LiquidPlanner)
- Mark Mader (Smartsheet.com)
- Guy Shani (Clarizen)
- Dean Carlson (Viewpath)
Of course this is just one of many exciting sessions – if you haven’t registered yet, you can grab a $100 discount by registering here.  Oh, and don’t forget to visit us at the Zoho Party – the address is #1 Cloud Avenue. 
(This article is cross-posted at the Office 2.0 Conference Blog)
Tags: cloud computing, Collaboration, o208, o2con, office 2.0, office 2.0 conference, office2.0, On-Demand, online, PM, PM 2.0, productivity, project management, project management 2.0, SaaS, web office
Zoli Erdos
Nicely put Zoli. When compared to project governance, project execution requires a lot more coordination and a different working context; regardless of the methodology used.
In order to track to that pretty MS Project promise the detailed tasks, unexpected problems, new priorities, design changes, technology refreshes, maintenance and dynamics of people all need to be stewarded to become “non-events”. …lets not forget the teams that are working on more than one (unrelated) project at a time too!
Three is good company. A good leader aligns people and processes with agile, easy to use tools that focus on activity management and execution.
I have read several interpretations of Project Management 2.0. 2 things:
- No real standard in the concept
- They all basically agree that it’s about using online collaboration tools.
Maybe someone, somewhere, should really say exactly what PM 2.0 is and others will follow.
[...] More recently people have begun to realize that this centralized function was not just a bottleneck for reporting, it was severely limiting the success of the teams and their projects. Distributing many of the project management functions and allowing the entire project team to collaborate and communicate effeciently is what the next generation of project management tools is all about. This improves project execution and make teams more accountable for hitting their targets and deadlines. Zoli does a great job of summing the key question of “What is the Promise of Project Management 2.0?” in his blog post about the project management 2.0 panel. [...]
Zoli, I am looking forward to meeting you at the Office 2.0 conference.
I think the question of what was wrong with PM 1.0 and how does PM 2.0 attempt to address those things is going to generate a fantastic discussion! I’m SO looking forward to it.
Slightly more detail in my post about Project Management 2.0 @ Office 2.0
Cheers!
Well i think that PM 1.0 was all about planning, reporting and it served Management but did not help actual Project Execution. And My expectation of PM 2.0 is that They all basically agree that it’s about using online collaboration tools.
[...] Project Management 2.0 – What’s Wrong With 1.0? [...]
Hi Zoli and readers,
That’s a great intro into the panel. I look forward to it.
For those readers of Zoli’s blog, who won’t be able to visit our panel here’s my humble definition of the term: http://www.wrike.com/projectmanagement/01/15/2008/Definition-of-Project-Management-2-0
You can also find there a lot of content on various aspects of the trend.
See you.
I definitely think that the whole point of PM 2.0 is collaboration and sharing information. It’s related to Web 2.0 right? Social networking and online project management tools. It has already changed the way we conduct business!
[...] Project Management 2.0 – What’s Wrong With 1.0? [...]
I feel PM 2.0 is evolving in pretty good shape and various interesting posts about it especially by Andrew Filev and Zoli give a good insight into the ideas. But it is a fact that it needs to become a standard and there needs to be a structure to the concept so that it can be formalized. Some sort of guidelines(like PMI has for the PM 1.0 – infact also applicable to PM 2.0) or simply some extension to the PM 1.0 guidelines especially in the execution and communication methodologies is the key here. It must finally find its way either in the PMI or the PRINCE2 add ons or say extensions.
I don’t really know what the consensus definition of PM 2.0 is, but I do have a feeling based on my very 1.0-style experience
I think good software that shares information is really important in good project management. You need clear communication policies as well.
What about Enterprise PM 2.0? One of the major issues for Enterprise customers is that all these visionary leaders are building their own proprietary collaboration space while the Enterprise collaboration space is currently dominated by Microsoft and IBM Lotus. Does this mean that Enterprise customers need to step outside their collaboration space to use PM 2.0?
Fortunately, no. We’re seeing PM 2.0 solutions for both Microsoft (from Microsoft + business partners) and IBM Lotus (from an IBM Lotus business partner, Trilog Group, http://www.triloggroup.com).
With 160+ self-proclaimed PM 2.0 apps, its easy to forget the dominant players in the Enterprise collaboration space, namely because PM 2.0 is implemented an extension, not a replacement of the collaboration space.